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Chapter Ten
June 1852
An exhausted Beatrice cradled her son, Benjamin, as finally, he slept. Of her four children, his temperament was the mildest and sweetest…until he had started teething. Nine months old and in agony with swollen gums, the babe had hardly slept unless he was nursed or held, day or night. Despite the noises of the other two children playing in the nursery, Bea started to doze off in the chair.
“En garde!”yelled Edmund, six, before whacking two-and-a-half year old Isabella with a long wooden dowel.
Her piercing screech drew Bea’s body into a tight coil, and before she could shield Ben’s ears from the noise, he jolted awake with a pitiful cry. Both the governess and the nursemaid intervened with Edmund and Isabella, and Bea soothed Ben.
Her entire body ached from fatigue, but she rose and paced the carpet, bouncing Ben until he dozed once more, clutching her apron with his chubby fists. His hair, the color of dark clover honey, matched William’s, as did his smile. She kissed his head and settled back down into the chair, hoping she could rest a little.
The two servants had ushered Edmund and Isabella outside. Hannah, the nursemaid, was as exhausted as Bea after the last month of extremely interrupted sleep, and they had skipped their morning visit to the park—with dire consequences for Edmund’s behavior.
Bea dozed as well as she could, sitting upright in a chair and holding a fitfully sleeping babe. She had no idea how much time had passed when she heard the quiet voices of her sister Harriet and her eldest daughter, now nine years old. She forced herself to rouse, though it took some time.
“Shall I hold him, Mama?”
“Oh, Miriam, you’re a godsend. Here, you sit in this chair.” They traded places, and once her daughter was settled in, Bea slowly transferred Ben into her arms.
She accompanied Harriet downstairs, where they sat together before Harriet’s departure. Despite her own fatigue, her heart broke sitting across from her sister, now in her fifties. The woman’s eyes were as dull as the matte-black silk gown of deep mourning she had worn for the last year. Within the space of three months, she had lost her husband, followed by her daughter Diana, and the losses had drained the life out of her.
With William’s support, Bea had offered to take in Diana’s three children, including a newborn, as Diana had died of childbed fever. Diana’s husband’s family, however, had insisted on raising them.
After a few minutes of sitting quietly next to each other, in their own worlds, it was Harriet who spoke. “Miriam reminds me a great deal of you. Or who you would have been if you’d had other children around. If there had been more gaiety.”
“Oh? How so?”
Harriet sat pensively for so long Bea wasn’t certain she would reply, after all. In her grief, her ability to remain in a conversation had proven limited. “By ten, you had stopped playing all together. There was very little child left in you. Mama had not been doing well by then, had she? Miriam has her sober side, too, and like you, she’s attentive to everyone else.” A haunting smile moved her lips. “But she still plays. I drifted off while we were doing our needlework. When I woke, she had her two forefingers”—Harriet lifted her own to demonstrate—“conversing with each other.”
Bea smiled. “I hope she brought you some comfort.”
“She did.” Squinting, Harriet peered at her, as if seeing her for the first time today. “You had better rest before your guests arrive this evening. Lady Clara, is it?”
“I do believe I’ll send a maid to the nursery and go lie down while I can, yes. Oh, I don’t believe I’ve shared the news. Clara is expecting.”
Oh, dear.Foolishly, she had forgotten how Diana’s passing had soured her sister entirely on pregnancy and childbirth. Bea had given birth to Benjamin a month after the loss, and her sister had roused from her stupor just long enough to panic.
“I’ll pray for her,” Harriet said eventually.
“As shall I.”
A hint of her sister’s dormant personality shone in her eyes for a moment. “I’ll add a prayer you make it through supper without becoming with child. That James Robertson is so virile, you’re at risk even across a dining table.”
“Harriet!”
The woman’s dry laugh didn’t last long. “I told you to come to me after you’ve birthed two sons. Now you have them.”
They both sat in silence, remembering the night over a decade earlier, when, over sherry, Harriet had imparted her secrets of the marriage bed.
“I can no longer give you the advice I had intended. To go seek a proper lover now, just for yourself.” Her sister’s voice dropped to a whisper, and her eyes dropped to the floor. “It could kill you.”
Beatrice took Harriet’s hand in hers. “The furthest thing from my mind is a lover, or more children. Look at me!” As her mother-in-law had said recently, after four children, she had become four times frumpier. Swallowing, she tried to smile. “There will be no spiriting away at night to meet anyone—I would give anything simply to sleep the night through.”
After searching her gaze, Harriet nodded. “Have a lock installed on your chamber door. Don’t risk any more children, Bea. You already have four pawing at you, night and day.”
She swallowed down the truth—that she needed no lock to keep William away. Sometime after Ben was born, willing to do her duty, she had done her best to resume the conjugal practice they had adopted for times when their babes were young and her body was so focused on nursing. William would visit and make use of her softness to rut and spill on her belly.
Two weeks had passed since his last visit, she calculated tiredly. Oh, how the last month had seemed like a year! Between Ben being out of sorts, each of the children having some problem or another, her sister’s difficulties, maintaining social obligations as this year’s season ended, and supporting her husband’s burgeoning career, Bea had little left to give.
